By Chris Conroy
The podcast currently has 9 episodes available.
My guests today are Nneka Allen, Nicole Salmon, and Camila Pereira, the editors and contributing authors of a powerful new book about the lives and perspectives of Black fundraisers in the philanthropic sector, Collecting Courage. We have a candid discussion about identity, the culture of whiteness in philanthropy, and the tradition of philanthropic solutions that Black communities and families across the Western world have created for themselves and their broader society that are rarely recognized.
Collecting Courage is a powerful and moving collection of personal experiences written by Black fundraisers that chip away at the idea of an inherent goodness of the charitable sector. So how can a sector that exudes such external benevolence be the cause and source of pain and trauma in the form of macro and micro aggressions as documented in these stories?
These personal testimonies document racism, survival and the pre-eminence of 14 accomplished Black North American Fundraisers, 5 from the United States and 9 from Canada. This collection of works also speak to the journey of asserting Black identity in all-white work environments. The writers speak of their quest, often thwarted in the charitable sector, to bring to their workplaces the love they have inherited from their struggles to survive in a white dominated society. These brilliant, first-person narratives give voice to a more accurate and complete picture of philanthropy and charity in North America.
A Final Truth is the last chapter in the book and features the poem Fragments, written by Nicole E. Cozier. The editors specifically selected this piece to end the collection of stories because it perfectly encapsulates both the pain of our experiences as well as how Black fundraisers would feel if they worked in oppression-free spaces.
WHERE TO FIND TODAY'S GUESTS:
BOOKS & MEDIA REFERENCES:
This week we begin our focus on whiteness in the field of philanthropy and we are starting off this series of conversations with the original fund-diva, Ms. Kishshana Palmer.
Kishshana Palmer is a national speaker, trainer, and coach with a 18 -year background in fundraising, marketing, and talent management.
The field of philanthropy is in the middle of an upheaval and complete transformation. If you are looking for someone who can help you understand where philanthropy has been and where it has the potential to go, the work it can do to advance racial justice and improve the work of charities of every cause, you need look know further than our amazing guest today.
She’s a supernova on any stage and a multiplicity of web platforms due to her charismatic and candid delivery. It doesn’t matter if she’s speaking about philanthropy, living your most authentic life, or diversity, the energy she brings to the stage is always entertaining and edifying.
Kishshana is the author of Hey, I’m New Here, a new fountain of advice for leaders of the new school. The book posits that new leaders need to know that times are changing (fast) and what worked five years ago won’t work today. Since just about every team in an organization is composed of people from different generations our ways of approaching work are nuanced and blended. Today’s manager (and aspiring manager) are the leaders of the new school.
She is also the coauthor of a powerful article that was published by the Chronicle of Philanthropy this past July entitled, To White Leaders of Philanthropy: Do It Differently This Time, which has received quite a bit of attention in the fundraising and nonprofit world. Kishshana wrote this piece with her coauthor Ajuah Helton and it lays out a comprehensive set of recommendations and principles for predominantly white philanthropic and charitable institutions when they seek to contribute to movements for racial justice.
While Kishshana’s consulting practice is well-known. She doesn’t limit her work to organizations. She also coaches women entrepreneurs.
Kishshana is an adjunct professor at Baruch College, Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE), a BoardSource Certified Governance Trainer (CGT) and an AFP Master Trainer. She is the founder of the Rooted Collaborative, which she defines as “a female-focused and led community for BIPOC female leaders, entrepreneurs, advocates, and artists who are redefining the look of philanthropy and fundraising, through our eyes.”
WHERE TO FIND KISHSHANA:
MEDIA REFERENCES:
Our fall season's first guest is Gibrán Rivera. I've known Gibrán over 15 years now. It was he and a group of his colleagues at an organization called the Interaction Institute for Social Change (IISC) that initially inspired my work in the field of education and group facilitation. Just as he has done for so many others, his facilitation helped my colleagues and I shape a collective vision for how to become more effective educators who could truly lead with love.
I have never seen a person who was so skilled at elevating the abilities and the thoughts of an entire group of different people in real-time until I met Gibrán. His talents are sorely needed in our world and I’m super honored to have him discuss topics related to whiteness, masculinity, and community on today’s program.
Gibrán is an internationally renowned master facilitator and the founder of the Better Men Project and What Should White People Do? He helps the transformation of leaders, networks and organizations. He develops our capacity to work with complexity. And he pays very close attention to dynamics of power, equity and inclusion.
Gibrán invites us into what he calls a forward-facing remembering. He understands that our next evolutionary leap depends on trust and what he calls the currency of love. And he has devoted his life to defining better ways of being together in this world.
The central commitment of his work is to bring great people together to do work that changes everything and the work is about a just transition.
Where to find Gibrán:
Media References:
Reconstructing Whiteness Community:
https://chrisconroyconsults.thinkwellspring.com/reconstructingwhiteness
Friends, I am so deeply appreciative of your support of this show and engagement with our ongoing conversation about the impact of whiteness and what it takes to unlearn white supremacy culture as white people.
We already have hundreds of listeners and in the last two weeks, we've doubled our total audience. Wow! So amazing.
This might seem a bit counter-intuitive but before we begin producing the Fall Season for Whiteness at Work, I would like to hear from you, the audience about what you would like to see.
So, we are opening up our first Community Survey to you our listeners.
You can access our Community Survey at this link: https://forms.gle/hsU9JhNzZAP22jdD8.
We will keep your information private and your insights will all go towards improving our next set of shows starting in the first week of September.
As an added bonus and thank you to our community, anyone who responds to our survey will be able to make themselves eligible for us to make a donation of $200 on behalf of one of you to a Black-owned business, a nonprofit organization supporting anti-racist activism, or a mutual aid society of your choice.
So, let us know:
We're open to all ideas.
For questions about the survey, you can learn more by visiting:
https://www.thinkwellspring.com/waw-survey-fall2020
or simply email me at [email protected].
We look forward to hearing from you. Keep learning. Keep searching. Keep the conversation going!
Brandy Colbert is the award-winning author of several books for children and teens, including The Voting Booth, The Only Black Girls in Town, The Revolution of Birdie Randolph, and Stonewall Book Award winner Little & Lion. She is co-writer of Misty Copeland's Life in Motion young readers edition, and her short fiction and essays have been published in a variety of critically acclaimed anthologies for young people.
Her books have been chosen as Junior Library Guild selections, and have appeared on many best of lists, including the American Library Association's Best Fiction for Young Adults and Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. She is on faculty at Hamline University's MFA program in writing for children, and lives in Los Angeles.
Brandy is the recipient of the 2018 Stonewall Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award, one of a set of three literary awards that annually recognize "exceptional merit relating to the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender experience" in English-language books published in the United States.
Brandy was born and raised in the Ozarks, in Springfield, Missouri, where she attended Glendale High School. The works of Dorothy West, Barthe DeClements, Jesmyn Ward, Colson Whitehead, and Zadie Smith were impactful to her writing career. She began working on what would be her debut novel, Pointe, in 2009, inspired by reports of long-term kidnapping cases.
WHERE TO FIND BRANDY:
BOOKS BY BRANDY COLBERT:
MEDIA REFERENCES:
Dr. Atyia Martin is the CEO and Founder of All Aces, Inc., an alternative to traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting and professional development. Instead, All Aces is a Racial Equity Applied Learning [REAL] Partner for organizations with a mission to activate consciousness, catalyze critical thinking, and transform capabilities that advance racial equity and build resilience. They offer practical professional, personal, and organizational development which includes their online learning community, IntentionallyAct.com. Additionally, Dr. Martin is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Northeastern University's Global Resilience Institute.
Dr. Martin is a certified emergency manager with over 18 years of professional experience in the field. She holds an Associate of Arts in Serbian Croatian from the Defense Language Institute (DLI), Bachelor of Science from Excelsior College, a Masters in Homeland Security Leadership from the University of Connecticut, and a Doctorate in Law and Policy from Northeastern University. Dr. Martin and her husband were born and raised in Boston where they currently live. They co-founded Next Leadership Development Corporation, a nonprofit focused on building resilience in Black households and communities. Dr. Martin and her husband have five children, two still at home.
See her full bio here.
EPISODE CONTENTS:
00:00 - Introduction to Our Guest: Dr. Atyia Martin, CEO of All Aces Inc.
03:35 - Why is the fact that systemic racism hurts white people is important to understand? What are the most significant ways in which it does?
10:56 - When white people try to engage with racism through the white savior complex -- the need to try and fix other people or things -- and how it actually prevents us from holding up a mirror to ourselves, and prevents us from understanding that we have to address our own harm first before leading any kind of anti-racism work
13:30 - Dr. Martin references how people in power can reinforce oppression without meaning to do so or intending to achieve the opposite
18:15 - How Dr. Martin is attempting to replicate the community engagement efforts she leveraged in her work as Boston’s first Chief Resiliency Officer to create strategies for racial equity through her company All Aces and her unique online community IntentionallyAct.com
23:22 - Dr. Martin describes a future where white people are actively engaged in the project of deconstructing systems of white supremacy in themselves and the world around them.
WHERE TO FIND DR. MARTIN:
HOMEWORK:
Episode Contents:
00:00 - Introduction to Our Guest: Debby Irving, author of Waking Up White
03:41 - What is the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge?
09:09 - Why having multiple methods of learning and exposure to different perspectives is a critical part of learning about our own whiteness.
13:25 - “I realized I was the problem.” How a six-month course at Wheelock College helped Debby shift her focus from promoting diversity -- or “pretend anti-racism work” to interrogating her own whiteness.
18:28 - How Debby made the psychological transition from an egocentric reaction upon seeing her own investment in whiteness and white supremacy design (from shame and embarrassment) to taking transformative action and embracing interconnectedness.
24:59 - Why deconstructing white supremacy is spiritual work and how it relates to Debby’s next book
26:38 - Why the myth of meritocracy is a key part of upholding white supremacy and why “nice people” are such easy targets.
30:36 - What is the difference between being kind, the culture of interdependence, and “being nice” or “being polite.” What does it have to do with the culture of whiteness? How is it oppressive? How does it create emotional immaturity and an inability to deal with complexity?
39:34 - How whiteness disembodied us from ourselves and trains us out of our humanity.
41:48 - “Law and order starting with the individual.” The incentive for designing a society to train people out of their full humanity?
46:33 - You are expected to leave your human at home if you want access to the rewards of this society, no matter how emotionally sound you are. Hierarchy takes away the need to be accountable to each other.
51:14 - Debby teaches Chris how being intentional with language can interrupt ego, perfectionism, individuality, and attachment to white power structures.
53:17 - How Debbie sees the possibility of a future in which white people do the work to confront and deconstruct white power structures in themselves and in the world around them.
Where to Find Debby Irving:
Homework:
Media References:
Episode Contents:
00:00 - Introduction to Our Guest: Erin Kay Anderson, Founder at Eadem Arbor
05:45 - What we mean when we say we are "novices" at deconstructing white supremacy
06:38 - What is white body supremacy and what does it have to do with wellness?
10:44 - What does white supremacy have to do with appropriation? How taking wellness practices and attempting to embody other cultures is violent.
20:00 - How do people hide the way the ways in which they deal with white identity and the lack of self love that is associated with the need for supremacy?
27:00 - Erin reflects on her previous experiences working as a counselor with young people in a group home environment; talks about patterns where white children are lacking affirmation from caregivers
29:45 - The difference between communicating love from an "I" perspective versus a "witness" perspective
36:00 - Why whiteness as an identity is unable to achieve solidarity
38:50 - The perverse nature of white supremacy and the impulse to divide and conquer spaces that Black, Indigenous, and people of color have created by themselves for themselves, especially when you believe you are a so-called “progressive” person
43:30 - White supremacy teachers us to elevate ourselves, destroy and dominate people rather than take the responsibility for healing our own scars
47:30 - How white people are living with the trauma of unaddressed scars that are manifesting manifesting as hereditary disease
48:42 - We have to choose between dealing with clean pain versus dirty pain
53:40 - How white people are educated out of appreciating differences and into acquiring and appropriating culture through power relationships
01:02:05 - Why choose Black Arts Movement as the focus of your studies in college?
01:11:22 - Erin's encounter with white people doing "good work" in predominantly Black communities and living in multiracial families, while also upholding white supremacy
01:15:00 - Why putting yourself in spaces where fate can take over is just as important as taking deliberate action on deconstructing our privilege.
01:21:40 - Regaining joy and richness through friendships which regard our full humanity and leaning into the things we don't know about ourselves
See more at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-NiIKr7Z9A
Key Links
Where to find Erin Kay Anderson:
Homework:
Our very first guest is a friend who I have had the privilege to know for almost 14 years now. At work, he goes by Dr. Peter Michael Plourde, but as a Hip Hop fan, he is best known to me by the name "Professor Lyrical". Professor Lyrical is an artist and professor known for leveraging Hip Hop culture to empower citizens to self-advocate for socioeconomic change. Professor Lyrical blends talks and performances into compelling presentations utilized by many institutions looking to harness the power of Hip Hop culture by incorporating it into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education.
WHERE TO FIND PROFESSOR LYRICAL
HOMEWORK
MEDIA REFERENCES
The podcast currently has 9 episodes available.